


Emrys, Immortal

by charlaine2124



Series: Emrys, Immortal [2]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-04
Updated: 2013-04-18
Packaged: 2017-11-25 01:03:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/633436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charlaine2124/pseuds/charlaine2124
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merlin has waited for Arthur, and when they meet again it bring with it a whole new set of problems. Merlin remembers everything. Arthur is as ignorant as the first time they met. And Merlin isn't sure he knows how to act around his king after they were apart for so long.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Christmas Day, 2012

Merlin had felt it months before. The faint, unfamiliar tug that caused him to pack his life away and erase the life he had built. It was a familiar process. Time and again he had done it, when it became clear that he was and old man who got no older. This time felt different; there was an urgency as though being late would be worse than simply catching the next bus home.  He walked until once again he stood at that ancient shore. Emrys, immortal, waited.

It was during a hail shower that had him running for the cover of the trees that he first noticed he wasn’t alone. Christmas Day was not a time he would have expected tourists around Glastonbury Tor, as the isle was now known, but there – walking among the trees – was a man whose bearing was so familiar it made Merlin’s heart ache. He reached for his magic and after a few muttered words found himself just as he was when he said goodbye to his king all those years ago.

“Hullo?” The note of his greeting resonated among the trees. The hail shower cut off abruptly.

The man turned, blonde hair bouncing around his ears. Merlin had to force himself not to react. The figure now facing him had no such restraint, and approached Merlin at a gentle jog. He smiled widely, but it faded as he slowed to a stop and looked questioningly at Merlin’s stoic expression.

“Hello?” His eyes were questioning, scanning Merlin’s features in confusion. “Merry Christmas! What brings you out here on such a miserable morning?”

“I could ask you the same question.” He answered shortly, panicking, with his voice catching in his throat as soon as the words left him. He was suddenly afraid. That it was all a dream. That everything would fade as it had in every dream every night for the last thousand years or more.

“Well, it is traditional to take a walk on Christmas Morning. My parents and sister are at church, so I decided to come out here.” He sounded offended. “I wasn’t aware this was private land; I was just making conversation. You called out to me; it would have been rude to simply ignore you.”

“I know, I… I thought I recognised you.” Merlin’s heart was heavy, and he could not respond as his instinct drove him to. He was not the same boy who walked into Camelot and met a spoiled Prince. He had been through too much, waited too long. He could feel tears stinging at the back of his eyes as memories he thought long buried assaulted him again.

“I… I’m sorry. I have to go.”

Emrys, immortal, fled.


	2. Boxing Day

That tug refused to let him leave. So it was the next day that he found himself once again at the shore of a lake that only he remembered. The day was overcast and his hair, still short around his younger face, blew in the strong breeze. The world was quiet, and he could hear the road beyond the trees. Listening to the distant roar was soothing his uneasy stomach, and a calm unlike any he had experienced in this place before settled on him.

A screech of rubber on tarmac. Brakes protesting. Then a crash – metal on stone. Merlin leapt to attention and transported himself without a thought to the source of the noise. Four cars piled up together, the front car seeming to have swerved from the other direction to avoid a child in the road, who still stood screaming at the wreckage around him even as a young woman ran forward to scoop him up.

 Merlin rushed forward to the rearmost car first and pulled out a young woman and man – shaken but not harmed. The next car had only one occupant, an old man who was unconscious, but woke when Merlin shook him. Merlin helped him out and handed him to the man from the first car to take care of. It had only taken a minute to pull them all out, and when he was sure that the three were ok, he turned to the final two cars.

They were scrunched together, nose to nose and still humming with the dying moans of engines crushed beyond repair. There was no fire or ominous smoke – thank goodness – but merlin had no idea where to start. He began with the nearer of the two cars. Inside were two men who could have been brothers. They were both unconscious and slack-jawed, and the driver was slumped against the wheel while his passenger was leaning back, head thrown against his seat with the force of the collision. Merlin pushed at the metal and plastic that had folded around the two men with his magic, just enough to pull them both free. He could hear sirens in the distance, and there was someone behind him looking in, ready to pull the two men free. Merlin allowed the hands of two men who had pulled up next to the accident to pull the unconscious pair out, and turned his attention to the last car.

This was the car that had swerved, the car that had caused it all, and when merlin peered inside he gasped at what he saw. He should have come here first, he should have been thinking straight and looked at the car in worst shape first, because inside there was carnage. An old man sat at the wheel, his head moving and eyes groggily trying to focus on his surroundings. Beside him, a beautiful woman who despite her age was still breath-taking.

Merlin could see that she would not breathe again.

And finally in the back – Arthur. His Arthur. A piece of twisted plastic that had pinged free of his door was shoved in his abdomen, and merlin could see the life draining out of him as though it was a light that was slowly diming before his eyes. For a moment the bloodied blue shirt was replaced with dented armour and pierced chainmail, but Merlin blinked and was back in the present again. His face was ashen but his eyes were open and looking straight at merlin, his mouth opening and closing in wordless pain.

“Merlin.” Arthur’s voice was weak, and even that word started him coughing and he looked as though he wanted to scream as the movement pulled at his wound. Merlin was taken straight back to this place a thousand years ago or more. He watched Arthur’s final breath again and the grief blinded him again and his whole being told him to run and run and never look back, never listen to the Dragon’s Call again because it meant nothing but hurt and secrets and pain and grief.

But he looked again at the Arthur in front of him, staring at him in a hopeless plea, and merlin knew that nothing would stop him using every ounce of his power to try and save him. So he pulled out the plastic with a thought and reached a hand through a door he didn’t remember opening to put his hand on the wound and simply opened himself to the magic.

When he was pulled away by a member of the ambulance crew he stumbled and fell to the floor in exhaustion. But one thought and one thought alone ran through his mind.

_Not again._


End file.
